Committee News

A Queens lawmaker wants to force the city Correction Department to notify detainees when they are being held on a mere $1 bail.

City Councilman Rory Lancman, who heads the Committee on the Justice System, plans to introduce a bill Wednesday to amend the city administrative code to require a notification system. “I don’t believe someone should be held on $500 bail, let alone $1,” he said.

The City Council’s Justice Committee is also calling for action from the five city district attorneys. “To exercise their discretion, their authority to not prosecute marijuana possession cases,” chair Rory Lancman said.

New York City to Overhaul Marijuana Arrest Policy to Fight Racial Disparities Observer, May 15, 2018

At a City Council hearing on Monday, Queens Councilman Rory Lancman, chairman of the Committee on Justice Systems, asked the city’s five district attorneys to decline to prosecute individuals who are arrested for low-level marijuana possession for misdemeanors. On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced that his office will no longer prosecute the majority of low-level offenses.

The head of the City Council’s justice committee is asking the city’s five district attorneys to refuse to prosecute people arrested for low-level pot possession for misdemeanors. Councilman Rory Lancman said he’s appealing to the DAs because of a massive racial gap in people busted by the NYPD for pot use.

Lancman (D-Queens) says DAs should automatically knock down the charges for people arrested for public pot smoking from misdemeanors to violations. For people slapped with summonses for possessing less than 25 grams of pot but not smoking it in public view, he says prosecutors should throw out the charges altogether.

“The city has proven itself completely unwilling and unable to end discriminatory marijuana possession policing,” Lancman said. “Prosecutors…need to step in here because the situation is becoming intolerable.”

Two District Attorneys May Stop Prosecuting Most Marijuana Offenses New York Times, May 14, 2018

Rory Lancman, Democrat of Queens, pointed to the 105th Precinct, which covers Queens Village. The Times showed the marijuana arrest rate there is more than 10 times as high as in the precinct that serves Forest Hills, Queens, despite both getting marijuana complaints at the same rate. The 105th Precinct is just over half black, while the one covering Forest Hills has few black residents.

“If that’s not setting off alarm bells, then someone’s not paying attention,” Mr. Lancman said. He added in an email, “They’re chasing a rationale for the very simple but uncomfortable reality that our criminal justice system unfairly impacts people of color, and they haven’t done anything to fix it.”

Surest Way to Face Marijuana Charges in New York: Be Black or Hispanic New York Times, May 13, 2018

Rory Lancman, a councilman from Queens who pressed police officials for the marijuana data at the February hearing, said with the police still arresting thousands of people for smoking amid a widespread push for reform, the police “blame it on the communities themselves because they’re the ones calling on us.”

City Councilman demands NYPD reveal precinct-level use of force data, rips police department for violating law

NY Daily News, May 10, 2018

Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), who sponsored the use-of-force law, blasted the department’s refusal to comply. Law stops NYPD from making cops’ disciplinary histories public “That’s nonsense,” he said. “You have the city’s primary law enforcement agency violating the law that the mayor signed, with impunity and complete disdain for logic and reason.” Lancman said “no reasonable interpretation” of the law would support the NYPD’s position.

“It’s as if the mayor has completely abdicated any responsibility for criminal justice in this city, and he’s just letting the NYPD run hog wild over the law and the public’s right to the most basic information,” he said.

Cash Is Still Hard to Find in New York City CourthousesNew York Times, May 2, 2018

Mr. Lancman is drafting legislation that will require the city to work with the Office of Court Administration to install A.T.M.s near arraignment courts or bail payment windows at every criminal courthouse. The A.T.M.s will include signage and a number to call for repairs. “At some point the city has to rethink how it executes the criminal justice reform policies they send press releases about,” Mr. Lancman said.

Is New York City ready to implement Raise the Age?NYN Media, April 26, 2018

Kaplan pointed out that use of the facility was one of a number of items, spelled out in a recent letter, that the city was waiting to hear back from the state about. Lancman was aware of the letter. “The letter set off alarm bells. Because it seemed to be establishing a rationale for blaming the state for not being ready,” Lancman said. “(Too) often this administration is blaming the state, the government, Mike Bloomberg, for things that, at least I believe, the city should be doing itself.”

City Councilman Rory Lancman, who heads the Committee on the Justice System, has slammed the repeated delays. “If there’s a better example of the criminal justice system being screwed up in New York City, I struggle to think of it,” he said. “A guy is sitting in jail because the department’s fax machines don’t work.”

Harry Siegel Column: What the NYPD Wants Us To SeeNY Daily News, April 21, 2018

Finally, there’s the breakdown of “good faith” Rory Lancman described in his letter to Commissioner James O’Neill on Wednesday after the NYPD blew by its deadline under a new law written by the councilman to post a full list of fare-beating arrests and summonses broken down by station, race, age and gender.

Lancman is using that fight as a proxy for an even bigger one, about how proactive we want policing — and particularly policing of young black men — to be in New York.

NYPD turnstile arrest data must be released to the public, councilman saysamNY, April 19, 2018

Councilman Rory Lancman criticized the NYPD on Thursday for not releasing detailed arrest data for fare evasion, broken down by subway station and demographics, adding that he’s considering filing a lawsuit to force the statistics’ release.

Lancman, chairman of the City Council’s Committee on the Justice System, said the NYPD is required to release the data to the public as part of Local Law 47, passed in December.

“If the NYPD does not comply in short order, we . . . are contemplating filing a lawsuit to compel the NYPD to comply with the law. That’s how you get people to obey the law, you file a lawsuit,” Lancman said. “They will not be allowed to ignore the law, so help me God.”

The law is the law, police will tell you, and we’re the law enforcers not the lawmakers. You don’t like it, change it. That tune changes when the law does, and the police don’t like that change. Then, they start sounding like lawyers.

Take Local Law 47 of 2018, which took effect on Jan. 11 and requires the NYPD to produce public reports on fare-beating arrests and summonses broken down by station and race, age and sex four times a year, starting Jan. 30.

Seventy-nine days and no such report later, the bill’s author, City Councilman Rory Lancman, has come out blazing with a letter to Police Commissioner James O’Neill accusing the NYPD of, well, breaking the law.

At a City Council oversight hearing Wednesday on the city’s efforts to implement the law, Council Member Rory Lancman, chair of the justice committee, criticized the city’s efforts and seemed to take the state’s side, saying the administration’s letter was blaming the governor’s office for what sounded to him like the city’s own unpreparedness for implementing Raise the Age.

“The timing of the letter and the substance of the letter suggest that the city might be more interested in setting up a scapegoat or an excuse for its failure to be ready [rather than] being ready,” Lancman said.

On Tuesday, City Councilman Rory Lancman, who heads the Committee on the Justice System, said it appears like the de Blasio administration is looking to blame the state for expected delays.

“It sounds like the mayor is setting up a scenario to blame the state for the city’s failure to properly implement Raise the Age,” he said, noting the letter was sent a day before a scheduled hearing on the progress of the plan.

“Raise the Age has been one of the holy grails of criminal justice reform for a number of years,” he added. “And now that we have this opportunity the city should be all hands on deck to make it happen.”

On April 5, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced the guilty plea of a construction company, City Metro Corp, and its owners for stealing an estimated $ 95,000 to two dozen employees.

Cases like these are not uncommon in New York, especially in construction, a sector in which they tend to go hand in hand with violations of safety standards at work and whose victims are usually undocumented immigrants. Therefore, on Monday, two solutions were heard in a hearing in the Council Committee of the Justice System that examined this problem. Diana Florence, of the Office of the Attorney General of Manhattan, spoke of the need not only to give an OSHA card for workers who complete safety courses but to maintain a database with them to avoid the black market of these cards.

Another solution to toughen the circumstances in which the theft of wages occurs is that they stop granting construction permits for years for the companies that are guilty of this fraud and the successors of these companies. Councilman Rory I. Lancman said it is a possibility to study and Florence suggested that the two options help protect this population at risk.

NYC DAs Sharply Divided on Proposal to Close Rikers IslandNY Law Journal, April 6, 2018

City Councilman Rory Lancman, a Queens Democrat who chairs the council’s Justice System Committee and who sits on its Criminal Justice Committee, said he was surprised that the views of his borough’s district attorney’s office on Rikers are “so out of step” with other DA’s offices in the city.

Lancman, who supports the reform commission’s recommendations, said that in his conversations with constituents, he has found broad support for closing Rikers.

“The rhetoric and the unofficial data being thrown around on this issue is very unfortunate and adds more heat than light to a very serious issue that affects the public safety of all New Yorkers and the lives of hundreds of thousands of mostly black and brown men who get caught up in the broad sweep of the criminal justice system,” Lancman said.

Nibbling Around the Edges of Bail in New York CityWNYC, March 28, 2018

A state judge recently found a local judge in Dutchess county set the bail too high for a defendant charged with shoplifting, without inquiring about his means. New York City Councilman Rory Lancman has been pushing the city to require judges to look at a defendant’s finances and the Vera Institute of Justice is now embarking on a pilot project.

City councilman Rory Lancman said it doesn’t make sense that you can pay parking tickets and water bills online, but not bail. He noted that 85 percent of those with small amounts of bail, between $500-$1000, can’t pay at arraignment. “So they’re spending whether it’s a day or a week at Rikers Island until their bail can be put together,” he said. “It’s not rocket science and for the life of me I can’t understand why it’s taking so long.”

If New York City wants to continue to have the best police force in the country, then we need to pay our officers in line with what officers working in other jurisdictions and city agencies are making. The path toward continued police reform depends on it.

City Council members say new schools chancellor’s raise justifies higher pay for copsNY Daily News, March 12, 2018

City Council members seized on the big raise Mayor de Blasio gave his new schools chancellor to push for raises for city cops.

Councilman Rory Lancman pointed out that de Blasio justified the high pay for his schools boss by saying it’s fair to match salaries paid in other cities — yet NYPD officers make less than many surrounding jurisdictions.

“Do you agree that police officers are entitled to the same standard?” Lancman (D-Queens) asked Police Commissioner James O’Neill at a budget hearing Monday.

New York City has long held the unfortunate distinction as the “Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World.” It is a title the city earned after years of heavy-handed enforcement of low-level marijuana possession cases, which served virtually no public safety purpose and clogged our court system in the process.

Data don’t show link between marijuana complaints and arrestsPolitico, March 7, 2018

At a recent joint hearing of the Council committees on the justice system and public safety, chairmen Rory Lancman and Donovan Richards were hard pressed to get NYPD brass to even share the data used for the POLITICO analysis.

“Until you show me the information, until you produce the data that we requested that shows there is a correlation, I just cannot accept that that is the justification for this incredible disparity,” said Lancman, chairman of the Committee on the Justice System.

Committee Chair Rory Lancman, Democrat from Queens, sat down with In Justice Today’s newsletter in advance of the hearing to discuss open file discovery and, more broadly, how cities can drive criminal justice reform.

NYPD under fire after stats reveal 86% of marijuana arrests in city are of black or Latino peopleNY Daily News, February 26, 2018

“Enforcement throughout the city is wildly uneven,” said Councilman Rory Lancman, chair of the justice committee, adding the NYPD failed to produce any documentation to support its claim that arrests line up with complaints. “I just cannot accept that this is the justification for this incredible disparity,” he said.

Video: Council’s Lancman on Next Steps to Close RikersCity Limits, February 21, 2018

Just days after Mayor de Blasio announced four sites for expanded or new jails to replace Rikers, and amid continuing fallout from a brutal attack on a correction officer by inmates, Queens Councilmember Rory Lancman–head of the Council’s Committee on the Justice System–joined 112BK on Tuesday to talk about where the city is on the path to closing the island jails.

Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Fresh Meadows) this week told the Chronicle that he will reintroduce a bill that would prohibit the NYPD from using minors as fillers in criminal identification lineups without parental permission.

“It’s the same bill as last year,” Lancman said, referring to a measure he introduced last fall that simply ran out of time before the election of a new City Council.

Lancman said the bill will do nothing more than codify what already is NYPD policy. He introduced the original measure last year after detectives in the 105th Precinct did include a minor in a lineup that included a teenage burglary suspect.

City Council hopes to grill DAs on ‘Wild West’ evidence-sharingNY Daily News, February 9, 2018

The city’s five district attorneys are being asked for a big reveal on their discovery practices. Members of a City Council committee are examining how the DAs share evidence with defendants, and borough prosecutors have been asked to testify at Feb. 27 hearing, the Daily News has learned.

State law requires prosecutors to turn over vital records on the eve of trial. Councilman Rory Lancman said that “over time the DAs’ offices have tried to address” unfairness created by the current law “to different degrees by adopting their own voluntary open discovery processes and some of those have been more open than others.”

“Right now it seems like a combination of the Wild West and a hodgepodge of different policies and procedures which we’re not sure add up to a fair and transparent justice system,” the Queens Democrat said.

De Blasio Fills 8 Vacancies on City’s Civil, Family CourtsNY Law Journal, February 9, 2018

With the new addition of six judges to the Civil Court, the mayor has filled nine of 12 vacancies on the bench, said New York City Councilman Rory Lancman, who chairs the council’s Committee on Courts and Legal Services, in a news release applauding the appointments. Lancman has recently been critical of de Blasio for leaving interim Civil Court seats open, which he said exacerbates delays in processing cases.

Manhattan DA to end prosecution for most fare beaters
NY1, February 2, 2018

In a statement, City Councilmember Rory Lancman supported the decision, saying: “New York City can hold people accountable for fare evasion without running them through the criminal justice system, I applaud DA Vance for implementing this smart policy.”

Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest) is the new chairman of the Committee on the Justice System, which will oversee criminal and civil justice in New York City.

The committee’s jurisdiction includes that of the Committee on Courts and Legal Services, of which Lancman previously was the chairman. It also includes all publicly funded criminal defense and civil legal service organizations, the five district attorneys and the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.

Lancman said he plans on building on the accomplishments of the Committee on Courts and Legal Services. As chairman, he tackled ICE enforcement activity in the courts, legal services available to low-wage workers, the process of mayoral judicial appointments, bail reform and the speedy-trial crisis.

With new justice committee, Lancman plans to push online bail among other reformsPolitico, January 22, 2018

The chairman of the City Council’s newjusticecommittee said that paying bail in New York is a “Kafkaesque” process and criticized the de Blasio administration for missing self-set deadlines for a modernized, onlinebail system.

“It’s an all day adventure, where [if there’s] the slightest glitch … the whole day is wasted,” committee Chairman Rory Lancman said in a recent interview. “You have to go to one of the jails, you have to have the exact money. … Faxes go back and forth.”

Queens Councilman Rory Lancman, who chairs the justice committee, also expressed disappointment that arrests hadn’t declined more in the last year. “We need clarity to determine if this policy is sufficient and what changes must be made,” he said.

“In 2014 the Mayor pledged to fundamentally change the City’s criminal justice policy by treating most low-level marijuana possession as a violation instead of a misdemeanor. However, these numbers indicate that the policy is not having the impact we hoped and too many individuals still wind up in the criminal justice system, draining District Attorneys’ resources and clogging our courts.”

Creating an online bail payment system is not rocket science. We can buy goods online. We can pay bills and parking tickets online. There is no reason why New Yorkers should not be able to pay bail online for their friends or loved ones too.

The city must investigate the Education Department’s botched attempt to fire a former principal who says she’s the victim of revenge porn, a lawmaker says.

City Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) said former Queens Principal Annie Seifullah was victimized by both her ex and the Education Department when a city lawyer displayed Seifullah’s private sex photos at her termination hearing in October.

“There must be an investigation into how the Education Department handled this case,” said Lancman, who sponsored legislation in December that outlawed revenge porn. “The city must protect victims of revenge porn, not shame them.”

NYPD must turn over info on fare beating arrests to City Council under new billNY Daily News, December 11, 2017

Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), who sponsored the bill, said the data is necessary to shed light on whether cops unfairly target black and Latino areas for enforcement.

“What we don’t know is how the NYPD is focusing its enforcement of this low-level, non-violent offense – in which neighborhoods, against which New Yorkers,” he said at City Hall. “If the data shows what we expect, we will have to have a very serious conversation about how we are policing our subway system.”

LANCMAN OP-ED: Revenge porn bill sends strong messageTimes Ledger, November 30, 2017With passage of this legislation, we sent a strong message to anyone who thought they could get away with this despicable act: not in New York City.

Revenge porn bill unanimously approved by city councilNew York Post, November 16, 2017

The city council voted unanimously to criminalize revenge porn Thursday afternoon, making it punishable by up to a year in prison.

Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) wrote the bill. He said district attorneys in the city will now have the tools they need to prosecute the people who commit these “abhorrent acts.”

“With passage of this landmark legislation, New York City finally calls revenge porn exactly what it is: a crime,” Lancman said after the vote.

The City Council on Thursday will vote on a proposed “revenge porn” law that would allow the NYPD to arrest people on charges of distributing explicit nonconsensual photography online, The Post has learned.

Violators would be charged with a misdemeanor and face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $1,000 under the legislation, which was introduced by Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens).

“We’re at a place where we’re going to be able to protect women [and men] from this disgusting, abusive conduct,” Lancman told The Post on Tuesday. “I expect overwhelming support for it . . . you don’t want to be on the wrong side of a revenge-porn vote.”

In hosting this legislative breakfast, our goal was to send a message loud and clear: Women’s health care is a priority and will remain a priority. We will continue to advocate for Choices Women’s Medical Center and vocally oppose any effort to undermine women’s health care.

New Yorkers Still Waiting for Online Bail-Payment SystemWall Street Journal, October 29, 2017

Queens City Council member Rory Lancman, chairman of the Committee on Courts and Legal Services, said the city’s delay is inexcusable at a time when a teenager easily can create an e-commerce site and New Yorkers can pay parking tickets and property taxes online.

“There are an appalling number of people who spend some amount of time on Rikers Island because the process of paying bail is so onerous and difficult for their family members that they’re just trapped,” Mr. Lancman said.

It is imperative that the city invest more resources in providing legal services for low-wage workers. Doing so is a win-win that will both assist the city’s most vulnerable and ensure that businesses are operating on an even playing field. The totality of these efforts will be a boon for our local economy, too.

Lancman asks City Council to help low-income employeesTimes Ledger, October 24, 2017

“Too many low-wage workers in New York City are not compensated fairly for the hours they have worked and their families struggle to make ends meet as a result,” he said. “Increased enforcement will benefit our community’s most vulnerable, those living paycheck to paycheck who can’t afford to make waves or challenge the boss, as well as boost our city’s economy and prevent principled businesses from being put at a competitive disadvantage for following the law.”

We are reminded during Domestic Violence Awareness Month that the power to speak up is critical to ending abuse. We must let victims know they are not alone, and that help is available. We must support advocates and local organizations on the front lines assisting our fellow New Yorkers. We must declare loudly, with one voice, that it is never OK to physically or emotionally abuse another person. We cannot tolerate this despicable behavior in New York City, or anywhere else.

Every act of domestic violence has ripple effects across our City. It leads to homelessness, hospital visits, police interventions, lost jobs, and significant mental health impacts on both children and families.

A steep rise in domestic violence across the five boroughs, and its effect on the city’s homeless crisis, prompted an oversight hearing Monday by the City Council’s Committee on Courts & Legal Services chaired by Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Hillcrest).

The hearing examined the effectiveness of New York’s Criminal Domestic Violence Courts and Integrated Domestic Violence Courts, courts which operate in each of the five boroughs.

To Shrink Jail Population, a Bail Program Is ExpandingNew York Times, August 29, 2017

For its part, the City Council passed legislation in June increasing the length of the hold the Criminal Justice Agency can request from two hours up to 12 hours. Rory I. Lancman, one of sponsors of the bill, said it was necessary to help people work through a bail system that is “Kafkaesque.”

For Manhattan Fare Beaters, One-Way Ticket to Court May Be OverNew York Times, June 30, 2017

“For too long, prosecution of fare evasion as a crime has disproportionately impacted people of color, bogged down our courts, and even put immigrants at risk of deportation,” said Councilman Rory I. Lancman of Queens, the chairman of the Court and Legal Services Committee and who has led an effort to subsidize fares. ”Diverting fare evasion cases away from the criminal justice system is a smart and sensible policy.”

The collection and reporting of this data will illustrate how the city’s prosecution of fare evasion impacts certain communities unfairly and leads to criminal consequences when a fine would be sufficient to deter conduct. We need more information, and more readily available information, to bring about change to the city’s overzealous fare evasion enforcement.

Councilman Rory Lancman called the move “a huge step forward,” but questioned the exceptions.The exceptions for recidivists “will unfairly burden and impact communities of color, because in those communities more people are on parole or probation and more people are arrested, even if they’re not ultimately convicted,” he said, “All it does is perpetuate a cycle of involvement in the criminal justice system.”

Thousands are locked up in NYC jails because they can’t afford bailNew York Times, May 18, 2017

“It confirms that the vast majority of people are on Rikers Island because they can’t afford bail, they’re overwhelmingly black and brown, many of them are there for nonviolent, low-level offenses — and all of this is at enormous expense to taxpayers,” said City Councilman Rory Lancman ­(D-Queens), who requested the review.

Lancman said the data should spur the city to speed up its 10-year timeline for shuttering Rikers Island, an initiative that depends on cutting the jails population in half — in part through bail reform.

Lancman called on the city to expand its supervised-release programs — an alternative to pretrial detention — which the city tripled in size in 2015 to cover 3,000 people.

Rory Lancman, a Queens councilman who has pressed the mayor to do more on criminal justice issues, said politics drove the timing, if not the substance, of the announcement. Mr. de Blasio did not want to wait for the release of Mr. Lippman’s report on Sunday, he said, which would have left him virtually alone among the city’s progressive Democrats in defending Rikers.

“He big-footed the Lippman announcement and got on board the train before he was about to be under it,” Mr. Lancman said.

With the stakes so high for so many in our city, it is up to the mayor to determine if he is going to use his authority to protect people, or silently feed into Trump’s deportation machine. Talking about standing up to Donald Trump is one thing, but actually taking action is far more important.

New Yorkers are counting on the mayor to do what’s right and take a real, actionable stand for our values against Trump.

LANCMAN OP-ED: Raising the Age Raises Us AllNY Law Journal, January 17, 2017

Rory I. Lancman and Joshua Kingsley write: Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s renewed push in his State of the State address to raise the age of criminal responsibility is a critically important component of criminal justice reform. It’s also an opportunity for New York City—working with the judiciary, the district attorneys and the defense bar—to expand local policies and procedures to mitigate the effects of New York’s draconian age threshold while we wait to see if the legislature heeds Gov. Cuomo’s call.